Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2021-03-05 22:52
McDonalds Eater wrote:
> Hi everyone, I would like to open a discussion to talk about
> the terminology we use to describe clarinet sound.
> Here is a list of terms most commonly used to describe clarinet
> sound with MY definitions. I should note: these definitions are
> how I hear them and how I would interpret them. By no means am
> I saying that these are "the correct way" to define them or
> something. At the end of the day, everything is subjective.
>
Communication can only take place when participants in a conversation share an understanding of the terms - vocabulary - they're using. If only two people are talking to each other, only they need to agree on what their words mean. If conversations and discussions involve a fairly small group of people, say, a particular teacher and his or her students, or some other group with shared experiences and exposures, it's still possible for them to develop the kind of intra-group understanding that can allow meaningful communication.
When you talk about "terminology we use to describe clarinet sound" you've vastly complicated the process. Who are "we?" is one important question. Your definitions will probably find lots of agreement and more of "us" may understand some of the terms in the same way you define them and disagree about others. The problem always is that, since we don't always know how others are using their terms, we don't know what they mean by them. Communication is not reliable without that kind of shared agreement on basic terms.
You've defined your usage, but it's really too cumbersome for each of us to try to define every term we use in a discussion just to be able to use those terms meaningfully. And even the way we define the terms may be ambiguous. For example, your own list includes "focused" and "centered" in each others' definitions. I've never heard chocolate make a sound, so I have no idea at all what a "chocolatey sound" could be. "Ring" is something you really have to have experienced aurally, and IMO live, because it's the first thing in my experience that the recording process cancels out, so although I have a clear idea of what it means to me, I don't think I could describe it to you in a meaningful way.
People can (and do) use the terms you've listed and many others, but always at the risk of being misunderstood. Fortunately, clarinet discussions don't generally involve anything life-threatening or vital to world order and peace. And if you really want to know what a mouthpiece or instrument does or what a particular player sounds like, you always have the option of judging for yourself, bypassing anyone else's description. So, I suppose the bottom line is that if you use descriptive terms (or at least ones that are not intrinsically properties of sound but are appropriated from other senses than our hearing), you accept the possibility of not being understood by your target audience. Certainly not a prohibition, just a caution.
Karl
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